A Letter to the GSA Opposing the Proposed Demolition of the Century and Consumers Buildings

 
I am writing to strongly oppose the proposal to demolish two classic skyscrapers in downtown Chicago.  This proposal is unacceptable on several levels.

1.  The Consumers and Century buildings are indispensable landmark-quality structures that typify Chicago architecture. The Consumers is from the distinguished Chicago firm of Mundie and Jensen, and is an elegant terra-cotta clad tower that typifies the great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan 's definition of a skyscraper as "a proud and soaring thing".  The Century Building is from another historic firm, Holabird & Roche, and marks the transition from the original Chicago School or architecture, to Art Deco. It's Neo-Manueline terra cotta ornament is unique.  It holds down its corner with power and grace.

2.  The Security justifications for demolition of these buildings are, to be frank, specious.  While one never wants to minimize the concerns of members of our Judiciary, those concerns cannot be allowed to govern policy solely on the grounds, not of reality, but of power.

The Consumers and Century are claimed to be an existential threat to Federal employees, yet only yards from the Dirksen building stands the Berghoff restaurant building, whose roof would provide a dangerous staging area for those looking to inflict harm.  More to the point, directly across the street is the Citadel Center, a glass-clad tower whose south facade opens vistas directly into the windows of the Dirksen Building.  As Citadel is winding down its Chicago operations, the possibility of unoccupied floors grows.

Even more importantly, the range of a common hunting rifle extends up to 400 yards, a long-range rifle double that distance, which means the same threat claimed to be presented by the Consumers and Century is also presented from a large number of tall buildings, privately-controlled, on the periphery of the Dirksen Building, including the glass-facaded former Home Federal Building on State (which ironically would have a clear view of the Dirksen Courthouse should the Consumers and Century be demolished), the Bankers Building (many floors of which are dedicated to transient hotel rooms), the Edison, Marquette and former Continental Bank buildings.  This, of course, would also apply to a terrorist seeking to launch an incendiary device.

The Consumers and Century Buildings have lived in peaceful co-existence for over half a century, ever since the Dirksen building opened in 1964.  There has never been, at least in Chicago, a single federal judge or employee killed or injured from a sniper shooting from outside their building.  The sad reality is that in the one case where the family members of a judge were tragically murdered, it was not at a work site, but at their residence.  In the case of incendiary devices, it should be remembered that Timothy McVeigh did not drive into the Alfred P. Murrah building to destroy it, but simply parked next to it on the street.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that a nation willing to trade away liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither Liberty nor Safety.  To apply this to the present case, what is being proposed is trading two essential pieces of Chicago's urban fabric for a "security" that is both illusionary and dangerous.

3. Both structures are essential contributors to the State Street Streetwall.  Although the promise is to replace them with a park, their demolition would be the equivalent to the wholesale damage done to the center cities of the United States by destroying historic structures for parking lots, like pulling front teeth and replacing them only with painted gums.  More to the point, the proposal to change the Dirksen Building entrance to one off of that State Street park would destroy the entire concept another famed architect, Mies van der Rohe, developed for the Federal Center, in which all three buildings - the Dirksen Kluczynski and Post Office - revolve around the great plaza on Dearborn Street to create a sustaining civic space.

4.  The GSA was already at the point of approving a developer's plan to restore the Consumers and Century buildings as residential structures, when, inexplicably, the rug was pulled out from under them at the last minute.  Despite the GSA's long, often indefensible, laundry list of provisos in its request for comments, I still believe that was a viable plan, with security requiring approval - or even control - by the GSA.

However, local preservationists have presented proposals that meet all of those provisos, turning the buildings into document archives and other back-office operations, with the GSA in full control of security including removal of windows and other modifications where required that do not vandalize basic design integrity.  The GSA should accept these proposals.  The $52 million already earmarked for their destruction should more than cover the cost.

5. Conclusion.

Even a quick glance at the GSA's massive portfolio of properties demonstrates its proud history of enhancing America's cities with superior buildings, including both Mies's Federal Center, and, more recently the award-winning replacement for the Murrah Building designed by another great architect, Carol Ross Barney.  The destruction of the Consumers and Century would stand in stark opposition to everything the GSA's historic legacy stands for.  

We can do better.  We must do better.  Save, repurpose and  restore the Consumers and Century buildings.

Sincerely,

Lynn Becker

Illustration #1: distance between Dirksen and Berghoff buildings

Illustration #2: distance between Citadel Center and Dirksen Building (Century Building in far distance right)

Whalenado! Float streams Fruit of the Sea past Architecture of Chicago

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It's an aquatic invasion.  The Chicago Loop Alliance turned to St. Louis-based illustrator Noah MacMillan to create Float, a 2,500-square-foot mural wrapping around the corner of Holabird and Roche's 1915 Century Building at State and Adams.  It's one of a number of major summer-time projects from the Alliance that includes The Gateway, a colorful seating area in the median of State Street between Wacker and Lake, and Block Thirty Seven, a Pop- Up Art Gallery in a never-occupied space in the lightly inhabited Block 37 shopping mall across from Macy's.

Float, which officially went on display earlier this week, depicts, in the words of the artist, “aquatic animals floating through a coral reef of Chicago” in a “surreal parade” that sees a great whale sliding past Alexander Calder's Flamingo, and an octopus stretching out its tentacles to the City/County Building.  Do the clown fish and jelly fish represent the City Council? 

We first wrote about the Century back in 2008, when it was an eyesore of dilapidated scaffolding.  The year after, the General Services Administration, which owns the building, took measures to ameliorate the squalor and has worked with the Loop Alliance to make it one of their Pop-Up galleries on a continuing basis.  Last year at this time, the Century's mural space and first floor windows were a solid, bright red as part of the Alliance's Color Jam project, in which artist Jessica Stockholder turned the corners of the intersection, and even the street itself, red, green, orange and blue.

The basic problem remains, however.  The GSA hasn't really decided - at least publicly - what to do with the Century and another terra cotta skyscraper,  Mundie and Jensen's 1913 Consumers Building, a few doors south on State, which were acquired after 9-11 to provide a security moat to the adjacent, half-block long Dirksen courthouse building, from 1964, the first structure to be completed in Mies van der Rohe's Federal Center complex. The feds now own the entire block, save Berghoff's.

South of Quincy, which has been transformed from a street to pedestrian court along State, the GSA turned to 4240 Architecture to rehab and retrofit three buildings on the block.  The low structure at 18 West Jackson was rescued from its status of having one of ugliest facades in city.  The former Bond's store on State also received a new, more open facade.  Along the south side of Quincy Court, there's Alfred Alschuler's 1937 Benson Rixon store building at 230 South State, which, when new, was the epitome of style and elegance before a long descent that found McDonald's becoming the long-term anchor tenant. 

Photograph: Chicago History Museum

Back in 2009, the GSA had published a Building Preservation Plan from Johnson Lasky Architect.

Unfortunately, few of the report's recommendations, such as restoring the original ground floor windows, appear to have been followed.

Instead, 4240 was called upon to clean up and update the building, complete with a new, modern in a completely newer style entrance along Quincy.

The GSA appears to have pretty much emptied out the office floors of the Consumers and the Century.  The Consumers' terra cotta still gleams, but over at the Century, even the vivid colors of Float can't fully distract from the begrimed, long-crumbling Manueline Gothic-styled terra cotta or all the dead-behind-the-eyes windows.  

In the past, the options studied by the GSA range from placing a new fill structure between the Consumers and the Century, to replacing everything on the half-block with a huge new mega-structure.  To be fair, the small floorplates of these early skyscrapers present a signficant challenge to creating the kind of office spaces that are today's standard.

While the GSA's actions to “de-slum” the ground level spaces of the buildings north of Quincy is commendable, Chicago deserves better than having to endure the derelict state of the Century's facade year after year, with no resolution in sight.

Color Jam 360: from Drab to Fab

Vinyl Explosion creates Color Jam at State and Adams

click images for larger view

If you're around the corner of State and Adams, anytime from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. following, next Tuesday, May 29th through Monday morning June 4th, you can watch the creation of State Street's latest summer art blockbuster, Color Jam, by Chicago-based multi-media artist Jessica Stockholder,  complete with teams of workers and ten-story-high boom lifts.  Sponsored by the Chicago Loop Alliance, which also brought you Tony Tasset's EYE in 2010, Color Jam promises to be .  . .

. . .the largest public artwork in Chicago’s history and the largest contiguous vinyl project in the U.S. It is composed of over 76,000 square feet of colored vinyl—enough material to make 50,000 vinyl records, wrap over 130 city buses or cover one and a half football fields. Printing Color Jam on a standard HP home printer would require 2,100 ink cartridges and 180 hours of continuous printing. [editors note: the discovery that the vinyl, would not, in actual fact, be printed on a HP home printer led Hewlett Packard to announce on Wednesday that the company would be laying off 27,000 workers.]

However you measure it - and personally, I like to think of it as enough vinyl to pipe all our broken dreams to somewhere past Muncie - that's a lot of pieces, and if you're there towards the end of a shift during the set-up period,  I'd watch yourself lest you become the victim of a punch-weary volunteer, a la the wallpaper scene in A Day at the Races.

The buildings at the four corners of State and Adams represent nearly a century of Chicago architecture: the 2003 Citadel Center by DeStefano and Bofill, SOM's 1962 Home Federal, Holabird and Roche's 1915 Century Building, and Eckenhoff Saunders' Unicom Thermal Chilled Water Plant, from 1995.

Color Jam will saturate streets, sidewalks and building facades with a bold and resonant palette, creating a sensation of "walking through an animated film."

As people approach - on foot or in a vehicle - flashes of color will begin to reveal themselves: a stripe on the pavement, an unusual shape on a high floor of a skyscraper.  Closer to the corner, color will begin to intensify and overtake the field of vision.  Geometric shapes will form as they spill from buildings onto the sidewalk, overtaking traffic lanes, joyously "jamming" the street. And in the middle of the intersection - a vortex of color and shape will mark the Loop's latest destination.

You can download the brochure on the project here.  Already up and running on the Color Jam webpage is this streaming webcam overlooking the intersection, where you can watch the installation unfold.

Live video by Ustream
Color Jam will open officially at 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, June 5th, and run through September 30th.